At 8:15 into the interview Mr. Kall asked, "How do we come up with language that is really clear and that makes anybody who supports climate change denial feel like an idiot?" Well, good luck, you need it. Is this any way to carry on a serious debate? If they really had the science behind their position the facts would speak for themselves. There would be no need for making anybody "feel like an idiot".

So, in the spirit of Mr. Kall’s question let me do my best to make him and Ms. Wysham look like idiots. Lets start with her question about what conspiracy we climate realists think they are engaged in. She asked, "What conspiracy could these scientists be engaged in? It's clearly beyond the pale, to imagine a conspiracy by scientists-- for what reason?." The answer is simple, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s a gravy train. Namely, in the US, the four billion dollars a year spent by the government on climate research. Of course, one must be on the "right" side of the debate to cash in. Witness noted Meteorologist William Gray’s experience with federal funding being denied to him since he went against the orthodoxy. Yes, four billion dollars will buy plenty of consensus.

Moving on, Ms. Wysham stated that glaciers around the world are in retreat. This is not as absolute as other alarmists who claim that all glaciers are melting, but it’s close enough. One need only point to the Hubbard Glacier to debunk this one. See here for a list of growing glaciers around the world.

As usual, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was cited as evidence that the science is settled. To quote from the 2007 report:

Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion takes into account observational and forcing uncertainty, and the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be underestimated by climate models.

The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence7 that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m2 (see Figure SPM.2). {2.3., 6.5, 2.9}

Footnote 7:

7 In this Summary for Policy makers the following levels of confidence have been used to express expert judgements on the correctness of the underlying science: very high confidence represents at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct; high confidence represents about an 8 out of 10 chance of being correct (see Box TS.1)

How nine out of ten chances becomes settled science escapes this author. The IPCC report is clearly stating that they don’t know for sure. It might be Human emissions or it might be the Sun.

Lastly, let me ask here the question that they’re ignoring from my comment to the interview. At 2:10 into this interview with the BBC Prof. Bob Watson, definitely no "denier", stated that the Earth has warmed by three quarters of a degree centigrade during the last century and a half. This is nothing. How is it supposed to be the cause of a great crisis?

Once again, the alarmists are shown to be making much ado about nothing. The only question to be asked now is when will we be able to discuss the subject rationally rather than having to deal with propagandistic terms like Global Ecosystemic Meltdown and climate change denier?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Abajo cadenas means down with chains and is part of Venezuela's national anthem. Below are translations of text that appears at the beginning of the video:

Venezuela"s Constitution

Article 68

Citizens have the right to demonstrate, peacefully and unarmed, with no restrictions except those established by law.

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The students march peacefully towards the National Assembly to deliver a document proposing solutions to ALL Venezuelan's problems. The Metropolitan Police and the National Guard denied them this right. For this reason they instead went to Plaza Venezuela. There they were violently repressed by the government's security forces. This repression happened while Hugo Chavez took over national radio and television to celebrate his failed coup attempt of February 4, 1992.